OVER BEMERTON'S

AN EASY-GOING CHRONICLE

BY

E. V. LUCAS

"IT IS VERY DIFFICULT FOR HUMAN BEINGS NOT TO INFLUENCE EACH OTHER: WE ARE ALL LINKS IN A CHAIN."—Observer's Corner

New York THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1908

All rights reserved

COPYRIGHT, 1908, BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.

Set up and electrotyped. Published October, 1908.

Norwood Press J. S. Cushing Co.—Berwick & Smith Co. Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

Listener's Lure The Open Road The Friendly Town The Gentlest Art Fireside and Sunshine Character and Comedy The Ladies' Pageant A Wanderer in Holland A Wanderer in London Anne's Terrible Good-Nature

CONTENTS

CHAP.

I. ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS AND FINDS A HOME IN WESTMINSTER

II. INTRODUCING THE READER TO MR. AND MRS. WYNNE, A COUNTY CRICKETER, A SUFFRAGETTE, AN HEIR OF THE AGES, AND AN ANGEL

III. THE HAUNTS OF MEN REVISITED AND THE FIRST BEMERTONIAN NUGGET

IV. DESCRIBING MR. AND MRS. DUCKIE, ALF PINTO, BEATRICE, AND ERN

V. MR. DABNEY OF THE BALANCE LETS HIMSELF GO

VI. MR. BEMERTON CONFERS UPON ME THE FREEDOM OF HIS TREASURY

VII. RECALLS OLD STRUGGLES IN THE EARLY DAYS OF GRACE AND INTRODUCES A TYRANT FROM LUDLOW

VIII. I MEET AN OLD FRIEND AND RECEIVE A LESSON IN PHILOSOPHY

IX. HOW MRS. FRANK TRIED HER INNOCENT GAMES ON ONE OF THE GREAT ONES OF THE EARTH

X. A HERO-WORSHIPPER AGAIN GLIMPSES HIS HERO, AFTER MANY YEARS

XI. MR. BEMERTON'S FIRST BED BOOK BRINGS US INTO THE COMPANY OF QUAINT AND LEARNED GENTLEMEN

XII. THESPIS SENDS ME TWO REPRESENTATIVES ON THE SAME DAY AND MONOPOLISES OUR ATTENTION

XIII. I GO INTO BUSINESS PRO TEM, READ A GOOD POEM UNDER DIFFICULTY, AND LEARN SOMETHING OF WHAT IT MEANS TO BE A SECOND-HAND BOOKSELLER

XIV. THE LINKEDNESS OF LIFE IS ILLUSTRATED, AND I BECOME A MONEY-LENDER

XV. MR. DUCKIE, WITH HIS NAPKIN ON HIS ARM, SUGGESTS A SCHEME FOR HUMAN HAPPINESS

XVI. MR. DABNEY OF THE BALANCE MEETS MORE THAN HIS MATCH, AND FINDS A RESCUER

XVII. IN WHICH, AFTER EXCEEDINGLY TEDIOUS TALK ABOUT THE WISE EXPENDITURE OF SUPERFLUOUS CASH, AN IDLER IS SET TO WORK

XVIII. WE ASSIST AT A FUNCTION IN THE MODERN SMITHFIELD, BUT NOT QUITE TO THE DEATH

XIX. SOME LATTER-DAY CHILDREN ARE PROVIDED WITH VERY CONGENIAL MATERIAL FOR LAUGHTER

XX. AN UNEXPECTED CHEQUE LEADS TO PLANS OF TRAVEL, AND NAOMI AND I ACCEPT A RESPONSIBILITY

XXI. WE ARE WHIRLED AWAY BY THE 2.20 FROM CHARING CROSS AND MEET THE QUEEN OF THE ADRIATIC

XXII. MR. BEMERTON'S SECOND BED BOOK SOLACES ME WITH THE ODD AND HUMANE HUMOURS OF STUARTS AND TUDORS

XXIII. MISS AZURE VERITY AND MR. DABNEY OF THE BALANCE CONTINUE TO KEEP MY MIND TO A SINGLE SUBJECT

XXIV. WITH MR. BEMERTON'S ASSISTANCE I TAKE REFUGE AMID A GALLANT COMPANY OF SEA DOGS

XXV. I ASSIST AT TWO WEDDINGS AND HAVE THE BEST OPPORTUNITY FOR CONTRASTING THE GRAVE AND THE GAY

XXVI. MR. DABNEY AGAIN SUFFERS, AND THE YOUNGER GENERATION DOES NOT KNOCK AT THE DOOR BUT WALKS RIGHT IN AND TALKS EXTRAORDINARY STRAIGHT TALK

XXVII. MISS GOLD SHOWS ME THE WAY

XXVIII. REACHING A POINT WHERE MY HISTORY BEGINS TO BE WORTH RECORDING, I CEASE TO NARRATE IT

OVER BEMERTON'S

CHAPTER I

ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS AND FINDS A HOME IN WESTMINSTER

"Mr. Falconer," said Naomi to Mrs. Duckie, "wants quiet, clean rooms and the simplest cooking. Rarely anything but breakfast, and that very light. It must be in this neighbourhood, so as to be near Queen Anne's Gate."

Mrs. Duckie said that hers were the quietest rooms in London and almost the nearest to Queen Anne's Gate: certainly the nearest quiet rooms. As for her cooking, although she had of course in her time served up for dinner parties of ten or a dozen, when she was with Canon Lyme, she was famous for her small happetising meals too. If Mr. Dabney was only up and dressed we might ask him.

Mr. Dabney had the rooms above mine—or, I should say, above those which (as I could see) Naomi intended should be mine in about five minutes—but being a gentleman on the press who kept very late hours, he did not appear till nearly lunch time;—all gentlemen who use their heads, said Mrs. Duckie, needing their full eight hours, if not nine. As for herself, she could do with six or seven; but Duckie wanted his full eight, and had them too, coming as he did from a sleepy stock. She had known him of a Saturday night when he had slep' for a good ten.

"I also like to get up late," I said, "but that is owing to my misfortune in being unable to sleep well. I suffer very badly from insomnia."

"Yes," said Naomi, "and that is one reason why I brought you first to these rooms, because of the advantage of living over a second-hand bookseller's shop. Don't you see that there will always be something to read? When you can't sleep," she hurried on, "and you are tired of all your own books, as one then is, you have only to get up, light a candle, slip on your dressing-gown" (Naomi's mind is all hopefulness and practical method), "and go down to the shop for as many others as you want. Because of course you will become friends with the bookseller directly. You always do."

"All very well; but how if the bookseller only rents the ground floor and basement and lives four miles away in Harringay with the key under his pillow? which as a matter of fact he does, for Mrs.—er—Mrs.—told me so while you were looking at the bathroom. What then, Naomi?"

"Oh, I don't think anything of that," she said: "why, he'll give you a duplicate key within a week. And look," she went on, "what splendid cupboards those are, and it's a Lambert grate too, and it's known that they throw the heat right out into the room" (Naomi has no scepticism in her, and she remembers so many advertisements), "and it is so convenient to have the bedroom and the bathroom leading out of each other. It is a good bath, too: the hot water comes at once."

"How long does it run hot?" I asked.

"Dear Kent," she cried, now as completely on the side of the landlady as if they were in partnership, "you are so suspicious. It keeps hot all the time. I tried it."

Mrs. Duckie corroborated. "There isn't another house within a mile," she said, "which lets rooms that has a bathroom like ours. It was put in by the landlord when he thought of living here himself, and then of course he had his accident and married the nurse and settled down at Hendon for life. And though I wish him nothing but happiness, it's an accident that I've found it in my heart to be very thankful for, laying in that beautiful bath of a Saturday night."

"After the books and the bathroom," Naomi broke in, "the best thing is the corner position. The windows look right along two streets. Think how interesting that will be sometimes. Because I shall put your table in the corner, so that you can look up from your reading and see out of both equally well."

I mentioned something about draughts.

"Oh no," said Naomi; "there will be india-rubber piping put all round, and sandbags over the cracks."

"They are such a violent red," I said.

"Yes, of course, when you buy them," said Naomi, who thinks ahead by instinct, "but I shall cover them for you. I saw some stuff at Libnett's the other day. I think purple is the colour for this room, and blue for the bedroom. Yes, purple and blue. I will send for a book of patterns at once, and we can choose them to-morrow morning when the light is good."

"But the 'Goat and Compasses' opposite," I said, determined to be as difficult as I could, "isn't that rather near?"

"Not a better conducted house in London," Mrs. Duckie at once broke in. "The landlord and the landlady are as nice a couple as God Almighty ever set behind a bar. He was butler to Lord Latimer, and she was the cook, and his Lordship left them each five hundred pounds. They've only been there eight months, and already the place is so changed you wouldn't know it. The difference between it now and what it used to be!" Mrs. Duckie raised her hands. "I assure you, miss," she said, "that if you had brought your—your——"

"Grandfather," I suggested.

"Oh no, sir!" said Mrs. Duckie. "What a thing to say! Grandfather indeed! Why, you're in your prime."

"Of course," said Naomi, "what rubbish you talk!"

"As I was saying," Mrs. Duckie continued, "if you had brought him to these rooms a year ago, and implored me on your bended knees to let him take them at twice the rent, I should have said no. My conscience wouldn't have permitted me to let them to a refined gentleman with insomnia and scholarly ways of life and relations in Queen Anne's Gate. I should have said no. But now—why, I might be living in the Little Cloisters at the Abbey again, it's so respectable and quiet."

"The sign of the 'Goat and Compasses,'" I remarked, "is said to be derived from the words, 'God encompasseth us."

"I shouldn't be surprised," said Mrs. Duckie, who at that moment was called away.

"Then you insist on my taking these rooms," I said to Naomi.

"No, Kent, not insist," she answered. "But they're really nice rooms. And central too. You've only got to cross the bridge and you're all among your Clubs and everything else, and such a nice walk to lunch through the park among the ducks and cormorants. I should be miserable if you were in Jermyn Street with no compulsory nice walk at all. And you're close to us and the Stores."

"Yes," I said, "and if ever I choose to go into Parliament, which any one may do to-day, how convenient! And how easy to become a Roman Catholic, with the new Cathedral so handy! And I might buy one of the Thames steamboats, which I am told are going very cheap, and keep it at Westminster Bridge."

Naomi laughed. She laughs at me now and then, not because she thinks I am particularly funny, but because she knows it makes me happier to think that I am thought funny. For Naomi takes things as they come, and, like most women, has no need of jokes. Brightness and sense appeal to her more than all fantasy, wit, or cleverness. People who think ahead are bound to be rather automatically receptive, and as a matter of fact her mind was already turning over the patterns; but the undercurrent of sweetness always running in her nature prompted her little kindly laugh. Deceptive, no doubt, but innocently so. A gentle hypocrisy is not only the basis but the salt of civilised life.

"The only objection left," I said, "is the name of the landlady. Do I really understand you to say that it is Duckie?"

Naomi laughed outright. This struck her as being really funny. "But, my dear Kent," she said, "you would not refuse good rooms because of the landlady's name?"

"Oh yes, I would," I replied. "That's exactly what I would do."

"Not when all you have to do," said Naomi, "is to call her something else? One of our parlourmaids was named Victoria, but we called her Jane. You could call Mrs. Duckie Landlady or Housekeeper."

At this moment Mrs. Duckie returned, and I took the rooms without another word.

"Mr. Bemerton will be very pleased," she said. "Mr. Bemerton has the book shop downstairs. He asks me every day if I have a tenant yet, and he has been hoping it would be some one who is fond of reading."

As a matter of fact (although I did not tell Naomi so, wishing her to think that it was all her doing), as a matter of fact, I had made up my mind directly I saw the book shop underneath, that unless there were very imposing obstacles I should make these rooms my home. My feet have always led me naturally to second-hand booksellers' shops, and after thirty years of exile in such a bookless city as Buenos Ayres, the idea of being so close to one of these little terrestrial heavens was too much for me. Besides, think of the name—Bemerton—with the suggestion of holy Mr. Herbert in it.

That was my fate, I knew swiftly (as one does know his fate at fifty-five). I was to live over Bemerton's.

Having arranged to send in some paperhangers and painters at once, we bade Mrs. Duckie farewell and descended the stairs to the street; but I would not depart until I had bought a book for luck. Being a profound believer in the humour if not the reason of chance, I told Naomi that from the first shelf on the left hand that came as high as my heart I would buy two books: for her, the twenty-ninth book from the doorway (her age is twenty-nine); for me, the fifty-fifth;—no matter what the subject and no matter what the price.

And what do you think they were? Naomi's by curious and very pleasant fortune was Walton's Lives (with holy Mr. Herbert of Bemerton shedding a gentle light over all); and mine was a fat volume in a yellow paper cover, lying on its side, for which I had to pay two solid English pounds.

Naomi's face was a picture of disapproval as I produced the money; for she is no believer in fate and no supporter of supine acquiescence, wise receptivity, and all the rest of it: Naomi believes in self-help and courage and in getting one's books from the London Library. But when she saw the title her expression changed from disapproval to positive grief, for it ran thus: A Chinese Biographical Dictionary, by Herbert A. Giles, London and Shanghai, 1898.

"My dear Kent," she cried, "how very wrong of you to do these silly superstitious things! Whatever can you find to interest you in Chinese biography?"

"My dear young lady," said the bookseller, "you make a great mistake. The gentleman has bought what is at once one of the best and the least known books in this shop. If he looks at it to-night, however casually, and does not agree with me, I will cheerfully give him two pounds again for it to-morrow morning."

Directly Naomi heard this she brightened again—for was there not a bargain in the air?—and off we trotted to Queen Anne's Gate in very good humour, talking furniture and decoration all the way, with a word as to the promising and unusual business habits of Mr. Bemerton, and a few remarks from me on the favourite topic of the kindness of chance when one really gives her her head and refrains from even the shadow of authority.

To this Naomi replied that she thought, all things considered, that I had better get most of the things at the Stores rather than go all the way to Tottenham Court Road.

CHAPTER II

INTRODUCING THE READER TO MR. AND MRS. WYNNE, A COUNTY CRICKETER, A SUFFRAGETTE, AN HEIR OF THE AGES, AND AN ANGEL

Queen Anne's Gate, where my stepsister and her family live, is, I think, save for the lack of sun, the most attractive street in London. My stepsister's house backing on the Park, the windows on that side pick up some kindly oblique rays in the afternoon, but in the morning they are sunless. My stepsister, who is an optimist, says, however, that she would as soon see from her rooms London lit by the sun as have the sun herself.

Certainly she has made her own especial sanctuary very charming, and the view over the Park and the water to the cool line of Carlton House Terrace and the grey mist above is very soothing. To the right is the half smoked, half gleaming stone-work of the Government offices.

It is a quiet spot, undisturbed by shattering traffic. One sits here within sound of the greater music of the city, but so far removed from it that the cries of the water-fowl and the cooing of outrageously fat pigeons come soothingly to the ear. Now and then a bugle sounds in the neighbouring barracks. Big Ben booms the hours. In the room at the top of the house which I occupied on my return from abroad while Naomi was scouring the neighbourhood for a lodging for me, I used, as I lay awake at night, to hear the water-fowl so clearly that at first it seemed like old days in Norfolk. Now, it is a circumstance worth recording that after Norfolk there is no place where one can so certainly count upon watching the sure strong flight of wild-duck as St. James's Park.

It is very interesting, after an intercourse with a family which for some years has been carried on wholly by letter, with perhaps an occasional interchange of photographs, to be set down suddenly in its midst and become one of it. My stepsister of course came more or less naturally enough to me, for we had been friends when we were young, before I went abroad. Moreover, she requires no learning: she is always complete and the same. But her husband I had never seen, and as for the children (as I thought of them), they were just names and anecdotes and faded cartes de visite to me. I, however, thanks to their mother's loyalty, was more to them, for they had been told much about my young days, and I have no doubt that portions at least of my infrequent letters were read aloud as they arrived.

The initial difficulty—by no means a small one—of what I was to be called having been slowly overcome (myself objecting as strongly to the Uncle Kent which they seemed to favour as they did to the Kent pure and simple which I wanted), all went very smoothly, and the family quickly dropped company manners and showed me what it really was. Not that the difference was very marked, but a difference of course there always is—company manners being for the most part a kind of sandpaper that removes the asperities (and occasionally the attractions) of personality.

They are all very affectionate, but at the same time they all have their idiosyncrasies and cherish them.

There are (as one says) two boys and two girls; but the boys are twenty-seven and twenty-five, and the girls twenty-nine and twenty-one. Naomi, the eldest, is the quiet head of the house, for my stepsister has poor health and takes things easily, and it is understood that she must be saved from anxieties and trials. Naomi therefore is the buffer state not only between her mother and the kitchen but between her mother and the world.

Brasilia when I first arrived was a Slade student, a suffragette, and beyond correction or even instruction on any point under the sun. She wore a badge bearing the words "Defiance, not Defence." Drusilla is very pretty, but Naomi, I think, is beautiful. It is, however, Drusilla who wins notice. Naomi's beauty is for a riper judgment, since the better you know her the more beautiful she is. I thought of Ceres directly I saw her, and the impression grows. If I were an artist I would paint her so. She has the steady level gaze that I think of as that goddess's: she loves all little helpless things, and all little helpless things love her; she leaves nothing quite where it is, but stimulates and nourishes it. And yet to compare Naomi with Ceres is not doing her full justice, for it takes no count of her sympathetic imagination or her readiness for fun. Ceres the goddess, I take it, might have been the dullest woman in real life.

Naomi, although she could not be called clever and certainly is not witty, is so full of what, to save much language, one might call womanliness, and the best womanliness, as to suggest profound sanity. If I had to describe this gift in a single word, I should say acceptivity. Those of us who are born critical and exacting approach nothing quite simply: we disapprove or we approve, and in so doing lose not only time but equanimity. But to Naomi's serene, sane mind the world has to be accepted as it is, and therefore she is always the same. Not that she considers everything perfect, but she has an instinctive realisation of the inevitability of imperfection which keeps her contented—or at any rate prevents querulous discontent.